In this the first of two games over the bank holiday weekend Pacific were looking for revenge for a defeat earlier in the season.

The ground in Highams Park was marshy round the edges so the boundary had to be moved in in places. Pacific managed to turn up with twelve players and with no supersubs being allowed that meant that one missed out.

Pacific batted first against the familiar and accurate opening bowling pair of Curtis and Shofiq. The pressure built up and it told when Atkin called for a suicidal single and Bennett was run out. Pacific eventually got off the mark after 25 balls and Rajaraman bashed 10 off 11 balls before playing a poor shot. Atkin played in determined fashion for 4 off 46 balls whilst Jon Webley racked the sixes up over the short long on boundary. Webley’s 45 came off 34 balls and was a magnificent display of straight hitting before he was suckered by Utonsoya’s donkey drops.
Lay departed to a superb low catch in the gully before Brown was bowled unluckily (and was given out by his own team as the umpires had not seen it). Pascal departed in the another display of poor calling.

Bird and Aroon played very sensibly and took the score past the hundred mark. Bird made a very valuable 24 before giving a return catch to the bowler. Aroon followed soon after and then Gleadow edged behind for a golden duck.

At tea it was generally felt Pacific had fallen short of a par score by about 20 runs and a good bowling display was needed.

What happened next was a magnificent and unbelievable destruction of the Graces batting line up.

Under Lay’s attacking captaincy and backed by Rajaraman’s mind games from first slip Chris Atkin and James Gleadow tore their batting to pieces. Gleadow started the rot with two wickets in his second over which Atkin then matched in the next over. Pascal executed a direct hit to run out Whitmore whilst recovering the only ball that failed to stick in his gloves all day. Bennett and Webley held good catches to get the next two out leaving Graces 4 for 7 and facing huge embarrassment.

Atkin was simply magnificent with seven maidens and four wickets as his inswing was unplayable.

Shofiq made 28 with some lusty hitting, with a rusty Smith a particular victim, before a hoik off Brown to deep midwicket was chested down (with a frighteningly loud thump) and caught by Aroon. Brown wrapped proceedings up two balls later when Fawaz edged behind.

It was a magnificent display by the Pacific bowlers and Atkin in particular to rout Graces for 34 (equal 5th lowest score by an oppo against Pacific). Their scorecard read like binary code.

The fielding was very good although a couple of chances were missed. The batting was probably too fragile and as usual this season over reliant on Webley but in the end had contributed more than enough.

Graces Captain Richard Bielby reflects at the end of the season "As regards the pitch , we did have some concerns although scores varied quite a bit during the season(with the highest being 259). The reasons for the low score in our game were as follows: poor batting by us and good bowling from your side plus the fact we were playing on a genuine sticky wicket following torrential rain (in fact we had to bring the boundary in due to puddles on one part of the outfield)."